marijuana at school

Legislation to allow medical marijuana to be administered on school grounds has been passed by its first committee in Washington.

The state’s House Health Care and Wellness Committee passed House Bill 1060 with a 13 to 3 vote.The measure would allow medical cannabis products to be administered on school grounds to qualified patients. School grounds includes school buses and any school event.

According to its legislative digest, it:

Requires a school district to permit a student who meets certain requirements to consume marijuana for medical purposes on school grounds, aboard a school bus, or while attending a school-sponsored event. Requires the board of directors of a school district to adopt a policy that authorizes parents, guardians, and primary caregivers to administer marijuana to a student for medical purposes while the student is on school grounds, aboard a school bus, or attending a school-sponsored event.

Legislation (Senate Bill 181) allowing medical cannabis patients to use their medicine while on school grounds has been signed into law by Delaware Governor Jack Markell.

SB 181 authorizes patient caregivers to administer cannabis-based medicines such as tinctures and oils to a patient in a “school bus and on the grounds or property of the preschool, or primary or secondary school in which a minor qualifying patient is enrolled.”

“The law is similar to legislation adopted in Colorado and New Jersey – the only two other jurisdictions that explicitly permit qualified patients to utilize cannabis preparations while on school campuses”, says Danielle Keane, Political Director for the National Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

Tinctures are a common medical cannabis ingestion method for those under 18.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper has signed into law legislation that requires schools to establish policies allowing students who are medical cannabis patients to use their medicine while at school. The governor’s signature comes roughly a month after the measure was passed in the House of Representatives with a 56 to 9 vote; it was passed in the Senate unanimously, 35 to 0.

The new law is an expansion of a law Colorado lawmakers passed last year, which allows school districts to create policies allowing the use of medical cannabis on school premises. However, the law didn’t require districts to allow its use or create a standardized policy for medical cannabis; this has led to just one school district in Colorado (Falcon School District 49 in El Paso County) beginning the process of enacting a medical cannabis policy.

Legislation to allow students to use a cannabis medicine at school has cleared Colorado’s House with overwhelming support, and has passed the Senate with unanimous support. The bill now goes to Governor John Hickenlooper; a spokeswoman for the campaign says he plans to soon sign the bill into law.

“We allow children to take all sorts of psychotropic medications, whether it’s Ritalin or opiate painkillers, under supervised circumstances. We should do the same here,” says Representative Jonathan Singer, the bill’s primary sponsor. “Jack’s Amendment will assure that children don’t have to choose between going to school and taking their medicine”.